Matrim55
04 May 2006, 11:44 AM
Four dead in Ohio, May 4 1970.
Worth remembering.
Henry Porter
04 May 2006, 06:02 PM
Especially in today's political climate. Definately worth remembering.
russ
04 May 2006, 06:56 PM
Not a damn thing on the news tonight about it.
Revolt
04 May 2006, 07:11 PM
Not a damn thing on the news tonight about it.
Too bad. RIP.
Mountainia
18 May 2006, 02:22 AM
Not a damn thing on the news tonight about it.
But I heard something on the classic rock station.
Bill Archer
15 Jul 2006, 01:59 PM
Ironically of course Nixon had nothing whatever to do with Kent State.
Not that it stopped Neil Young from writing the song blaming him. The lore has it that CSNY did it in the studio in one take, because David Crosby broke down sobbing and Stills and Young didn't think he could get through another one.
Actually it was Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes who called out the Ohio National Guard (not the reserves, which are under Federal control, but the NG, which is a state entity) to protect Ohio State property at Kent State University, which the students were doing their best to burn down.
Badly trained, worse led and scared to death, tragedy happened.
A much more courageous song, incidentally, was "Waist deep in the Big Muddy", a Vietnam allegory by Pete Seegar, (author of "We Shall Overcome", "If I Had a Hammer" etc.) who had just gotten off the industry blacklist after 20 years of being banned from the public airwaves for being a Communist. (Which was of course true). Written in, I think, 1967, he played it on the Smothers Brothers TV show on CBS. The refrain went:
"We're waist deep in the Big Muddy,
the Big Fool says to push on"
"The Big Fool" referred of course to Lyndon Johnson, who had just ordered another troop buildup in South Vietnam, bringing the total to over 500,000. The weekly American death toll at that time was around 400. 30,000 were already dead.
The CBS censors went nuts and CBS cancelled the Smothers Brother's contract, despite the fact that it was a very popular show. Their careers were trashed.